


no air between us

by underdebate



Category: Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor
Genre: Family Feels, Fix-It, Gen, Post-DOGAM AU, resurrectionists do it better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 10:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1600820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underdebate/pseuds/underdebate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For chimaera, death is a sleep.</p>
<p>(Or, there is always hope as long as hope lives, and a thousand-thousand years' tithe might just be enough for one soul.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	no air between us

There is no chimaera equivalent to heaven. Karou doesn't know this for much of her life-- she believes in some abstract concept of life after death, something that perhaps human souls obtain. He does not correct her one way or the other. You live, and then you do not.

 

For chimaera, death is a sleep; a closing of one's eyes, a sigh. There is nothing written in their culture to suggest its permanence; they know only eternity. Brimstone has memories as fluid as water-- eons ago, now, a different past, perhaps someone else's-- of growing with a body that has been his for what feels like the beginning of forever. The things he does not remember are not his to keep: whether he had siblings, who his first slavemaster was. He was born for the magi.

 

He knows of no permanent death, because many times over, in that lifetime-- a lifetime ago-- he was sure he had died. He was beaten and died. The memories are so vivid he is sure that he could not have created them himself; beatings, whippings, a punctured lung, a cracked skull.

 

But that was his tithe, and like so many in his life, that tithe was enough to tether him. His soul would find its way back, after some time; the body he came back to would be the same, but mended. Magic is a blessing, never a right, and demands pain as its currency.

 

Death is a sigh, and sometimes a whimper.

 

-

 

The child that stares up at him from beside his workbench has cloven hooves and bat's wings, black as the pit, tucked against her back. Her hair is an unruly nest of brown-- much like the rest of her is unruly in some way-- and her eyes are deep and patient. She can stand for hours, watching like this; he will talk when he wants to show her something, be it the smallest tooth of a mouse or the translucent hue of an amethyst crystal, pierced through its heart to be strung on a wire.

 

She is always there. Even creatures freshly-born into new bodies have never made his soul feel as worn, or as ancient.

 

–

 

When he takes her by the hand and guides her to thread a needle through ragged edges of cloth, for the first time teaching her that material things-- and bodies as well-- can be mended, she watches his hands long after they cease to cover hers.

 

"You don't have eyes," she says, caught between stating a fact and wondering at a realization. He blinks at her-- quite a bit dumbly-- for a moment before he realizes what she means.

 

As a human, Karou will learn that some cultures have a resurrection story. Eventually asking her to sit down beside him, that day, he tells Madrigal their own.

 

–

 

It is almost thirty years later, and less than a blink. He is clinging to a bone-- where it came from, what it is, he does not know. It is small and curved and breakable, and he is sure his grip will splinter it into many pieces. There is blood, and his breath does not work as it is supposed to.

 

–

 

Death is a dreamless sleep. He does not know how he finds himself in it; will not remember that until he awakens.

 

He will be glad of the dreamlessness, later. To feel would mean he had let go.

 

–

 

When he wakes, there is no thurible, and no incense. There is the sound of a body wracked with sobbing, and he thinks he must have fallen, hit something, and there was no death. That sound is not what he imagined he would awaken to, were he ever to fall into death's sleep and wake from it again. But, like any other body that has slept for too long, his eyes cannot prise themselves open; his limbs are heavy.

 

He lets out some small sound-- something unintelligible, nonsensical. The sobbing hits a shriek.

 

For a moment, he does not want to be awake; he is afraid of what the world will show him when he lets it in, what he will see. But he is alive, and clearly someone woke him; he could not have slept for forever without letting go, or waking up. He is alive, and so he must open his eyes.

 

He forces them open. The world is blinding, and he is deafened, momentarily, by the addition of another sense to his body's dormant state.

 

"Brimstone?"

 

Awakening, he struggles to move his limbs; he turns his head towards the voice, knowing its source will be exactly what he expects, what he had always expected waking up would be like, no matter how long he slept for.

 

Karou's hands are pressed to her mouth as if she let out the word by accident. She is kneeling beside him. She has been crying for what looks like days, or perhaps mere moments.

 

He reaches blindly. She seizes his hand in a rush, grabs it between her own and squeezes as if to forcibly drag him away from death's sleep. His hands feel different between hers, and yet unchanged.

 

There is a surreal quality to the silence that permeates for a moment, interrupted only by small, choked noises and slow breathing. His mouth is too dry to speak.

 

Eventually, it comes. "You were always the first to wake me as a child. At dawn. With squalling."

 

The sobbing hits her again, but this time she presses her forehead against his hand, sobbing ferociously and laughing. She is in shock, disbelief at what she has wrought with her own hands; with great effort, he reaches with his free hand and cards it through her hair, cupping her face.

 

"You left me. With no instructions, no clues, no _notes_ \-- you just left and how was I supposed to know what you wanted me to do--?" Choking on helpless giggles and tears, she squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head, says, "How could you have expected me to be _you_?"

 

"Never in this millennium or any other could I have chosen better," he tells her softly, and they hold each other, pulling each other away from sleep until the dawn breaks.

 

**Author's Note:**

> NEVER DONE HAVING FEELINGS ABOUT BRIMSTONE AND KAROU.


End file.
